Naam Tamilar Katchi’s impressive performance in last year’s State Assembly election in which it secured around 6.58% votes surprised political observers , but its slump to a dismal 1.60% vote share and failing to win a single seat in the recently held urban local bodies election has put the party in the spot of bother.
Though the party cadres and its leader, Seeman, consistently claim the party enjoys considerable support from voters despite not paying a penny to them because of ‘ideologically committed’ supporters, the party leadership has been forced to contemplate whether its support base is being eroded.
The party’s young second line leadership claims distribution of money to voters by Dravidian parties, local influence of caste and caste leaders, fielding young (and not-so-popular) candidates and inability to field candidates across majority of the seats were some of the reasons why the party faced a slump.
“Apart from huge amounts money being distributed to voters, caste equations play a big role in the local bodies, where local support and popularity is important. In NTK, most candidates are in their 25s and 30s and it is unlikely that they would be popularity in the local area. We still think that core of the NTK vote base is 6-6.5%,” said Karthigaiselvan, State secretary, Tamil Revival Wing, Naam Tamilar Katchi.
He claimed despite losing their vote share, NTK continued to operate as an effective opposition and the party leadership was trying to woo victorious independent candidates in urban local bodies across Tamil Nadu into the NTK fold.
Mr. Karthigaiselvan said that Nithya Sakthivel, who won as an independent candidate from ward number 12 in Pandamangalam town panchayat in Paramathivelur assembly constituency in Namakkal district, joined NTK in the presence of Mr. Seeman recently.
Party sources claimed two independents from Kanniyakumari were likely to join the party.
